As NASA’s space shuttle program comes to an end and several baby boomers retire,  it can be unsettling to realize that the knowledge that sent the first man to the moon might be lost forever. But this scenario is occurring quietly all over corporate America. As boomers—one third of America’s workforce—are entering their golden years, millions of dollars’ worth of irreplaceable knowledge will be stepping aside every year.

Corporations not only can stave off this knowledge exodus, but also can hasten a knowledge influx and guarantee that knowledge will never again be static or localized to a few individuals. Moxie Software has recently launched Social Knowledgebase, which combines social collaboration technology with knowledge management, aiming to make it easy to tap into and capture knowledge sourced from individuals, groups, and even trading partners and customers.

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The days of companies making serious investments in general purpose social networks and collaboration tools seem to be numbered. The true value of collaboration tools comes only via enabling particular best practices and helping solve certain issues and situations. To that end, Moxie Software, a provider of customer-centric enterprise social software, recently announced the availability of its Collaboration Spaces for free. Enterprises of all sizes can benefit from Moxie Software’s functional collaboration application (with activity streams, groups, ideation, projects, discussions, wikis, blogs, user profiles, mobility, branding, etc.), which connects employees, customers, and trusted partners to engage in business, share knowledge, and collaboration.

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Telligent has announced the release of new capabilities for two of its enterprise social community software solutions: Telligent Community and Telligent Enterprise. A new version of Telligent Analytics was released at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

E2open’s recent win at Yanfeng Visteon introduced the E2open Collaboration Center as part of E2Open Business Network (EBN). This command center-like module consists of E2open products and services that provide real-time dashboard visibility for various partners on the network into demand and supply changes. It also provides access to analytics to assess the operational and financial impact of changes, and it offers decision support to preempt issues or resolve problems (see TEC article for more details).

According to Descartes Systems Group CEO Art Mesher in his recent thought leadership blog post, E2open is one of a new breed of companies that have risen to tame the fleeting nature of business relationships and their supporting IT systems in various communities:

These companies are characterized by continuous investment in systems that foster network communities and authenticated community participation with credentials, leading to creation of “trust federations” or what is dubbed “Entrusts.”  Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce that the business intelligence (BI) and analytics product BI360 by Solver is now part of TEC’s certified BI applications family of products, and is available for evaluation online in the Business Intelligence and Data Management Evaluation Center.

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Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Electronics, a joint-venture of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems and Visteon Corporation, has selected E2open to transform its supply chain collaboration program. E2open is a California-based provider of cloud-based, on-demand software solutions enabling enterprises to procure, manufacture, sell, and distribute products more efficiently through collaborative execution across global trading networks.

Brand owners use E2open solutions to gain visibility into and control over their trading networks through the near real-time information, integrated business processes, and analytics that E2open provides. Read the rest of this entry »

Established in 2002, Socialtext, a Bedford Funding portfolio company (which also owns Peoplefluent), was one of the first companies to deliver social networking software to businesses. Socialtext’s enterprise social networking products—including microblogging, blogs, wikis, profiles, and social spreadsheets—provide more efficient and simpler ways for employees to share vital information and work together in real-time. Delivered in the cloud or securely behind the firewall as an appliance, Socialtext customers can be provided with flexible deployment options that meet their security requirements.

After the recent partnership with Badgeville for gamification capabilities, this week Socialtext announced its distribution partnership with Winvale, one of the premier government-focused solutions providers in the United States. After multi-year success implementing the Socialtext software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform with government agencies, the offering will now be available through Winvale’s General Services Administration (GSA) Schedules.

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E2open is a leading provider of cloud-based solutions for collaborative execution across global trading networks—more than 33,000 trading partners in 69 countries currently participate in the E2open Business Network. On November 15, 2012, E2open announced the availability of the newest version of E2 Cloud Connectivity, the foundation layer of the E2open Business Network. Read the rest of this entry »

The marketing automation provider Marketo introduces Marketo Program Exchange, a new addition to its Marketing Nation platform. Marketing Nation is a free-of-charge network that can be joined by any Marketo customer. Marketo Program Exchange provides users with access to a pre-built marketing programs library. These templates have been created and deemed as best-of-breed by Marketo customers.

The press release states that the templates were verified and optimized based on the experience of 21,000 users who engaged with them. The members of the network can either use the existing content or further develop it. With this offering, Marketo acknowledges the importance of a collective that includes its customers as active contributors to product and service development. So far, more than 2,000 companies have joined the Marketo network.

tibbr 4 is the new version of what TIBCO calls its enterprise social platform. Beyond issuing a press release, TIBCO demoed the latest version of tibbr at the TUCON 2012 conference to showcase some of tibbr’s new features— Read the rest of this entry »

SAP and Ariba apparently have good poker faces, since during their recent user events, AribaLIVE 2012 and SAPPHIRE NOW 2012, there was no inkling of this development. At first glance, this is a good fit, as a plethora of large SAP customers use both Ariba Network and Ariba’s procurement, sourcing, contract management, e-invoicing, etc. software (in fact, in the early 2000s, the name Ariba was taboo at SAP’s Waldorf HQ, and Ariba was a competitor that SAP loved to hate). Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be the case that PLM was perceived as being principally about CAD tools and 3D drawings and complex technical specs that no one really understood except the geekiest of PLM geeks.

This perception was justified, to an extent. After all, PLM and CAD tools can be complicated, engineers and designers tend to operate in highly specialized environments, and there’s a common misconception that PLM addresses execution rather than innovation.

But after attending the PLM Innovation 2012 conference two months ago, I realized that PLM is starting to gain a reputation as an enabler of collaboration and innovation. Read the rest of this entry »

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the 2012 Supply Chain Management Buyer’s Guide is here. Download your copy now.

In this buyer’s guide, I address a topic that deserves more discussion among supply chain strategists: collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

The voice of the customer (VOC) concept has been around for decades, but the Internet and social media technologies have finally enabled it to its fullest degree. We have all heard of (and perhaps even contributed to) customers venting their anger or expressing their delight with some vendor’s service or some product’s characteristics and performance via online forums.

A company’s ability to spot market trends in a timely way and find competitive info such as good or bad sentiments about its products and brands should go all the way back to the design department (and its suppliers). Read the rest of this entry »

Not as well known as the JRocket Marketing Grape Escape but still highly effective (and entertaining), the analyst road show organized by Judith Rothrock every year in December brings together C-level executives from SYSPRO and UNIT4 and analysts from the most important firms in the field, including Technology Evaluation Centers.

I had briefings with both SYSPRO and UNIT4. They highlighted some of their accomplishments for 2011, and made some interesting announcements. Here’s a summary of the conversations I had with the two vendors: Read the rest of this entry »